Against Arius 4.2–4.12

So that this may be judged more easily, we shall treat it better as follows. Living and life are such that what living is, is life, and what life is, is living; not so that one is doubled in the other, nor that one is with the other, for that is a coupling: from this, even if inseparably joined, is it not united rather than one? But now, by the very same work, to be life is to live, and in the same way to live is to be life. For we are speaking of these two, of living and life, not of that which has life and living as an effect. And yet that too is a third, both in that which has life and as one from the other, but both as one. From this it appears what existences can do by themselves in their own spheres, since, the substance remaining one and the same, they keep their being with no innovation of themselves. For the being of life is to be moved, and to be moved is to live. To be, then, is both to live and to be life: one and the same substance, then; for for each thing, what is its being is substance. For in the higher and eternal things, that is, in the intelligible and intellectual things, there is nothing accidental, nothing that is quality, nothing twin or joined with another; all are living and understanding substances, pure, simple, uniform, which by the very fact that they are, both live and understand, and conversely, by that by which they understand, by this very fact they also are. “He lives” and “life”, then, are one substance.

But since the understanding unfolds itself thus, and the discourse has so proceeded that in what is living there is life, and in what is life, it is life because it lives, we must see and inquire with close reasoning whether this natural combination, this twin mode of existence, is one pure simplicity or two. If it makes no difference whether living is life, and if in being life living is present by force, we shall rightly and justly say that there is one of these for the existence of its being, not a twin coupling. But if, first, living is one thing and being life another; and likewise if there is a difference, so that now life is the cause of living, and now living itself is the cause of there being life, then these are two, but twin with each other and simply united in themselves; for it matters to the power, by its divine Word, that these be twinned, as of the same nature and power, the one belonging to that from which the other comes. And there is some difference, small though it be, so that the twinning is not in vain. For action and acting are not the same, nor power and operation; nor, to speak more truly, is cause the same as effect; for the one is origin, the other offspring. Hence, since these two, “he lives” and “life”, are action and acting, although they are in each other and together, they must still be judged of different force and nature, so that one is the cause of the other and the other exists as effect. But in my understanding and considered opinion, since in the principal and natural beginning of the first divinity living is first and life second (so reason will teach and truth itself approve), it comes about that living is the cause and life the effect of living; and yet living itself is also life, for these were together, and always together, as is known. Life is something else for the second and third things, and those after them, that live, ordered as cause and principle; so that for them life is the same and at once the same as living, but this living is second, from life, when it is life; whereas that first and principal living is at the same time life, the cause of life, and the fountain and origin of living things. I know this may seem obscure, not so much because of the things as because of the repetition of the same words, since these two are joined by such a coupling that when there is living there is life, and when there is life there is living; so that, once either one is established, the twinning of the other will seem to have been made in vain.

Hear, reader, hear what will make you wonder: these matters, so hard, so tortuous, so closed in treating of God and divine things, we shall open by a simple discussion. We all certainly confess God: God almighty, God above all, God before all, God from whom are all things. When we confess him, we also confess without doubt that he is. What do we believe his being to be? What do we think? “God,” it says, “is spirit”; he is light, and God is true light. What is this that is called spirit believed to be? We are compelled to understand spirit as a certain existing, living and understanding substance. Some think the word substance low and foreign when used of the things above, and above all of God, and do not believe that the name substance fits even the lower things. But why should we shun this word, since for each thing its being is its substance? And in Jeremiah God, speaking, says thus: “But if you had stood in my substance, you would see my Word”; and so too there not much later, and in many other places. Spirit, then, is substance, that is, its being. Let us gather, then, what is said according to John: “God is spirit; and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” God, it says, is spirit, that is, the being of God: so the substance of God is spirit, the same substance, that is, what is living; not that substance is one thing and the living another, but that the living itself is substance itself. For if it is said by the same evangelist, “It is the Spirit who gives life”, then certainly he who gives life lives and is the power of life. The Spirit lives, then; God lives. Further, because he lives, as we said above, he is also life; the Spirit, then, is also life, as the same John says: “The Spirit is life.” So God, since he is Spirit, both lives and is life. Paul too says to the Romans: “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and do not walk according to the body; for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.” “The Spirit of life,” he says; for these three are spirit: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.

I think it has been proved of God that he is spirit, and that spirit both lives and makes live, and is life substantially, so that these are understood as simple and one substance, so that to be spirit is to live and to be life. But it is not that living which is ours, or that of animals, of the elements, of the things created from the elements, of the world and of all in the world, of angels and demons, or even of those whom people in the world call gods from the world: not that living, I say, is in God. God is not this, what the living of the soul is, either of each soul or of that universal and fountain soul; nor as the living of the angels there, nor of the thrones, glories and the rest that exist in eternal things, whether intellectual or intelligible; but he is that living from which these receive life and live according to their kind of existence; that living which in a certain way goes forth and breathes into them, as far as they can receive it, the power of living vigour; from itself to itself, through itself, simple in itself alone, pure, without any principle of existence; from which rather the principle was poured forth, or proceeded, or was born, through which the living of the others was created. For living begets life; for by natural force the agent is prior to the action: the agent begot the action, and though he himself gave it both its name and its reality, he took his own name, as it were, from it. This being right, it is also quite true by reason. Certainly God (to whom this name, God, fits because of his omnipotence and principal summit), God, I say, is first, if anything in God's works is to be called first; but the understanding of the human mind, in order to exercise itself and grasp things, attributes to things existing together or poured forth together both an origin and diverse origins, and as it were time. God, I say, first begot the existences and substances of the universals: these Plato calls Ideas, the principal species of all the species existing in them; of this kind are, for example, entity, vitality and intellectuality; and likewise identity and otherness, and the rest of this kind. So genera of genera are poured forth, indeed the universally principal powers of all powers. Entity, then, that is, existentiality or essentiality; vitality, that is, the first power of universal life, the first life and fountain of all living; likewise intellectuality, the force, virtue, power, substance or nature of understanding. These three are to be taken each by itself, but so that they are named and said to be by what they chiefly are; for none of them is not three. For to be is to be if it lives, that is, if it is in life; and living itself is not living if what lives does not have understanding. They are, then, as it were mixed, and, as the thing is, simple with a threefold simplicity. For whatever, by the very fact that it is, is also the other, must never be called twin, but always one.

But of these things more elsewhere. God, then, is living, which, being highest, first, fountain-like, principally principal, begot these three, that is, by his work of living procreated them so that they might exist. These came forth, then, by a work; and this is offspring, this is generation: that from the agent the act, from what is entity or essence, from the living vitality or life, from the understanding the act of understanding, the universal understanding of universal understandings, should be born. Living, then, is prior to life, although in what is living there is life; but living is as the parent of life, and life is the offspring and what is begotten, since it is begotten by the living. God, then, is living, that first living from himself, living before the living of all things and living before life itself. For he is acting, always acting, and acting without beginning; he is not acting from an action, lest action, or the imagination of a beginning, should be prior to the agent; rather the action is begotten or comes to exist or is poured forth by the work of the agent. This acting we place in what is living. God, then, is living, and principal living; life is as what is begotten. Living, then, is the Father, life the Son: for what was made in him is life, and the Son himself says: “I am the way, I the truth, I the life.” This is the life that arose from the Father's living, and this is that saying: “For I came forth from God.” Likewise he says of himself: “Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink; whoever believes in me, as the Scripture said, rivers of living water will flow from his belly.” Hence too what he answered the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would rather have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” And afterwards: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.” The Samaritan water is the worldly soul. “But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever; but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.” By these and countless examples of this kind it becomes sufficiently clear that Christ, the Son of God, is life, and eternal life; since he too, like the Father, is Spirit. “For what is born of the Spirit is spirit”; and the Spirit breathes, and breathes from himself; and to breathe is to live. Further, what breathes from itself lives from itself; what lives from itself lives from eternity and to eternity; for it never deserts itself, being the cause to itself that it is this very thing which exists. Since, then, the Father is what living is, as we taught above, and living is to be life, and likewise life is what is begotten from what is living, life is necessarily what living is. For life too lives by the very fact that it is life, and is life from itself, since living belongs to it from itself; yet from that first which is principally living, which is the Father, where and from which life exists, in which there is also living, and living from itself: and this we prove, understand and confess to be the Son, Jesus Christ.

Let us see how all that I have said is signified and asserted in the Gospel according to John through the Saviour's own words: “The living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father.” And lest anyone think that Christ said this of himself in the flesh, he added at once: “This is the bread that came down from heaven.” Then he testifies and teaches that he is life, and eternal life: “Unless you receive the body of the Son of Man, as the bread of life, and drink his blood, you will not have life in you; but he who eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life.” All, then, that Christ is, is eternal life, whether spirit or soul or flesh; for he is the Word of all these. And the Word is principal life; so the things he put on are also life. Hence these in us too will merit eternal life through the Spirit whom Christ gives us, these too being made spiritual. And lest anyone think that Christ said these things of the Christ in the flesh, and not of his whole self, which is spirit, soul and flesh, what does he say? “What if you see the Son of Man ascending?” Who is the Son of Man? Spirit, soul, flesh: for he had these when he ascended, and with them he ascended. What, then, does he add, so that spirit may be understood? “Where he was before”: that is, spirit, and life, which the Father is, which God is. Hence these are homoousia, that is, consubstantial, at no time existing outside each other, principally principal, one and the same substance, of equal force, of the same power, majesty and virtue; neither prior to the other, except that one is the cause of the other, and therefore other. But the other is truly the same, because the same is one God; and because it is other, therefore there are first and second; and because one is the cause of the other, therefore he is Father, because he is cause; and that which is from the other is Son. But in substance there is no distance, no distinction of time, no sign of difference; one motion, one will, and at times the appearance of another will, yet always the same.

Let us first teach from sacred reading that these things are so; then, as order demands and the necessity of the matter requires, let us consider why, among those who have one and the same substance, one bears the power of sender and the other of the one sent, one of commander and the other of minister; one with a motion of acting free from passions, the other boundless through boundless acts in creating the ages and the things in the ages, and subjected even to death, to countless passions. What is first lives, lives from itself, lives eternally; and this is God. What lives in itself, as I have taught, has the force of existence or substance, and the nature of life and understanding; or rather, in what is his being, he is himself that which we call living and understanding; and this is God. What is God's being, then, is the cause and Father of existence. And since in his very being he is also life, and in it also knows who he is, he is the fountain of universal life and understanding. For of these three, which are in God by simple existence, or which God is, God is rather being, which has from itself living and being life, or understanding and being understanding, as we taught above and in many places. So that we may now take the other two, I mean life and understanding, as begotten from what is being, having their being from that which is the first being, and having received, by the motion proper to their existing, the force and the name of life or of understanding. For all things in the three are threefold, and are named in a certain way and order: not that they are not threefold in each of the three, but because by motion they operate what they are said to be. For being is the first motion, which is called resting motion, the same as inner motion; for when it operates itself so as to exist, it is rightly named both inner motion and resting motion. Hence we call motion that which is “he lives” and living. But when, from what is “he lives” and living, completed and begotten in a certain way, the form of “he lives” and living has been formed into the shape of a state, this is called life, this is called the Son. For as any form, whether placed where it is or elsewhere, leads us to know him whose form it is, so life makes us know what living is. For living is act, and in act a course at every moment; and therefore it is said: “No one has ever seen God.” For who could see living, which God is, without the life that comes together and exists in a certain shape, with the lineaments of acting, so as to be the form of the living one? Life, then, is the form of that which is living, through which, or in which, what “lives” and living is, is seen, received and recognized. This is what the Saviour's saying signifies, as from the Father: “He who sees me sees the Father also.” For the Son of God is the form of God, that is, life, which is the form of the living one. For Paul says to the Philippians: “Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.” Likewise to the Colossians: “Who is the image of the invisible God.” So Jesus Christ is both image and form of God. And we have said that in the form is seen that whose form it is; and in the same way he whose image it is, is seen in the image, especially if he whose image it is is invisible, as is said here: “the image of the invisible God”. In the same way it is said in the Gospel according to John: “No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who came forth from his bosom.” And likewise it was said to Moses: “You shall not see my face; for who has seen my face and lived?” Yet he allowed his back parts to be seen, that is, what is below, the rest apart from the face.

How many mysteries are here! How many kinds of questions! How many signs declaring that both God and Jesus Christ are substance, that both are one substance, that both together are one substance, and that the Son has his substance from the Father! None of these, or of others like them, can in any way be explained, understood and approved unless the preceding discussion shines out with clear perceptions. Let this, then, be our fixed opinion: that God is spirit, and the spirit from which the Son too is spirit, and that the Holy Spirit is spirit. “For what is born of spirit is spirit”; and “The Spirit gives life.” What gives life certainly itself lives; what lives, because it is spirit, lives from itself; and what lives from itself is this very thing that lives. And because what lives from itself is itself what “lives” is, and has nothing else that could be called its living (for it was not given life, but itself lives, existing as “lives” or living), and because it lives, and living is acting, then, in that it lives from itself, it never began; for it did not wait for another, as it never deserted itself nor will desert itself. From eternity, then, and to eternity lives the principal and universal substance of living: not that it is substance and so living, but that the very thing that is living is substance itself. For when the living itself, the “lives” and the to-live, and in a way the being, is understood, its own being, which it is, is substance; and this, both in all sacred reading and by the very voices of things, is named spirit.

The spirit breathes, and breathes from itself, and God is spirit; and to breathe is to live. The spirit, then, which is God, lives from itself and always: lives, I say, and in the act of living, and by the very work, when he lives he is life; when he lives he works life. Eternal life, then, was born of the living God, was begotten; and because “he lives” is itself substance, what is from that which lives, life itself, is also substance, equal by the same reasoning and together with it, because “he lives” is itself life, and life itself exists by living so as to be life. Spirit, then, is living, and life is spirit: each embraces the other and is in both, and the one is not a twin added to the other, but, by the simplicity of what exists from itself and in itself, it is as it were a doubling of the other's substance, never separated from itself, because it is twin in each. For living is with life, and life again with what is living. And living, as we taught, is God, life is Christ; and because living is as the begetter of life (for by the act which is living, life is begotten as a kind of offspring), living becomes Father and life Son; these very two, because one is from the other, are therefore two. For how are there two, unless one is from the other? And always what is from another is son, and that from which the other is, is father. But here the other is not separated and diverse, but only other from other, as maker and made, begetter and begotten; by conjunction of substance both are one, since living is life and life itself is living: hence Father and Son are one God. And because the natural turning of existence is only one (for as in living there is life, so in life there is living, and there is one sole turning), therefore, since in what is life there is also living, the only-begotten Son is consubstantial with the Father; the Son himself is one, the Father one. Hence there is one and the same substance, together and always. For this is homoousion, having substance together, and an equal force and power of existing, and the same nature of substance, with no time going before: what we call consubstantial, what is living being causally prior to what is life, so that the one is begetter and Father, the other begotten and Son, both in being and in name. Since, then, they are in each other, and although when there is the Father he is not the Son, and again the Son, who is the Son of him whose Son he is, is not the Father, yet by the force of things and the equality of substance, since living is life and life living, it was rightly pronounced by the divine voice of the Saviour: “And I am in the Father, and the Father in me”; hence also: “I and the Father are one.” For by the force of things and with nature itself as guide, all things are nothing if they do not live; empty of living motion, they are not believed to have material bulk or any image or form of existence. For the slippery, inconstant force of a nature that flows and ebbs, subsisting without order, does not receive form so as to be said to be something.

Hence, lacking being something, matter so holds its being that it is rightly said not to be at all. But now, grasped and whole, standing round in its parts, formed and so embodied, and caught in some form so as to be something, it is also believed to be: because by living motion it is enclosed from the boundless by fixed lineaments and is brought forward to the surest senses. So the living force and power makes material things seem to be. This power flows down from that Word who is life, whom we call the Son, through Archangels, Angels, Thrones, Glories, and the rest that are above the world; first into incorporeal and immaterial things, clean and purer by their natural substance; as it runs and glides it bears its light with a greater sharing of itself; then it comes by degrees into soul and the fountain of soul. Because the soul is the image of the Word, by a certain kinship it receives a greater course of flowing down. And because in giving life it hastens to give life, its appetite in giving life becomes more wanton. Hence, plunged into matter and into the elements of the world, and at last entangled in the bonds of flesh, mixing itself with corruption and with death itself, it provides a mere image of living to the dregs of matter. All earthly, moist, airy, fiery, ethereal and heavenly things live, then, not by that prior Word, nor by the whole light of life, but by a wounded living light, because of their coupling with matter. Above the heavenly things live, and live more, those that have withdrawn from matter and bodily bonds, such as purer souls, Thrones and Glories; likewise the Angels and the Spirits themselves, some as in another, that is, having life in their substance; others are life itself: Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (for of him too we shall soon teach). They are together with God, but from God; they are life, but they live a universal life, and live from themselves, not having in another that by which they live, but so that this very thing is their being: to live and to be life, and to be knowledge, the Father handing it to them, that is, that which is living existing in the first place. Since, then, all these that have been listed live, and there is nothing, whether in eternal things or in the things of the world or of matter, that does not live according to its nature, it must certainly be confessed that there is a certain force or power by which all things are given life, and are raised as from a fountain of living into living spirits, so that from this they live, and because they live have received being.

Who is this, from whom the living spirit breathes into eternal and mortal things, by whom all things thrive, by whom they subsist, by whom they take up their own acts, by whom they have been begotten and come forth to beget? God, without doubt God, whom our mind venerates as the Father of living and the divinity of living. Him we shall call either the power of life, as we said elsewhere, or the supreme and princely life, general in the most general way, and the origin, cause, head and fountain of all living things; the principle of existents, the Father of substances, who from what he himself is provides being to the rest, governing the power of living and substance according to the force and nature of those who receive it. What is he himself, or in what is he? He is living and true; one, as he allows us to speak of him; he lives, and lives from eternity and to eternity, having from himself that very thing which is his substance. He lives; for act neither ought nor could accrue to him, lest at some time he be less than himself; but he is always perfect, full and whole, and in what is his being there is also his being thus. The rest come after God: they are powers, and actions of a power, which are believed to be by their own force, so that they all seem both to be and to have what existence, through the mature acts of procession, comes to have here in its work. They are called actions when, by the processes of existence, they beget and bring forth outwardly what they can be. So a seed is already in power both the stalk and the leaves; or the outpouring of desire in male or female. But these are in the world and under the moon; above, in the ether and the heavens, there are actions, and they live by actions, but having been begotten they were made what they were to be; for, sent forth from their origin into their own proper operations, they run through their acts by contact with the nature that holds them together.